My Bali High: Part Three - 'Forget Meditation, Wellness Seekers, You Need This Oil Slick of an Ayurvedic Massage'

 

One thing I had my heart set on doing while in Bali, aside from eating Gado Gado in a beach hut while gazing over pearl-white sand at the turquoise Indian Ocean beyond, was to experience some Ayurvedic treatments. I’d heard of a treatment where warm oil is poured continually onto your forehead while you are transported to places you’ve never been before! I was willing to put myself on some plastic sheeting to get me some of that good juju. It cures insomnia.

Ayurveda means – the science of life – in Sanskrit. It’s considered by its people to be the oldest healing science in the world and claims to ensure a long, healthy, happy life by working on the body’s imbalances. Ayurvedic massages combine these 5,000-year-old principles and pressure points. (They were doing this hot oily schizz 5,000 years ago!!) Balance my doshas.

After much research my gf and I found a wellness resort offering holistic ayurvedic treatments, in Ubud. An email exchange began with Amrta Siddhi, they quoted in USD and requested we prepay the full amount with a local bank account or PayPal. Their spare website didn’t have a comments section. We sent our cash hoping they were who they said they were. 

Their driveway gave nothing away.

I started with the river of warmed oil on the forehead.

Ketut, my gentle therapist announced that to get the best benefit from Shirodhara you have to have at least three treatments. Let me tell you plainly – once was certainly enough for this Ayurvedic adventure seeker.

After a firm face massage, with some intense action around my eye sockets and a good ear tweakage, a weighted eye pad was put in place. All my available senses heightened. Oil glug glugged from tin pot into copper urn and the contraption was slid into position. Without warning a filmy warmth spread over my third-eye-chakra. I started to write the ensuring sensations in my head but told myself to be present. Mindful. I lost count of how many times the oil pot was refilled. The oil varying in temperature was the only indication. My neck and the top of my shoulders were needled with deft knuckles but the main jam was the constant oil baptism. The oil had a pungent odour I couldn’t identify – an earthy, mustardy, catch under your fingernail’s lingering pong.

I willed the 45 minute process to hurry up. The oil was too hot at times and my forehead flamed, while my face flushed red. A thirst crawled in my throat and the back of my head tickled and twitched as oil pooled under my head. Ketut tied my longish hair up with a rubberband. I said nothing about the uncomfortable temperature because that's how I roll when I’m in the hands of an intimate stranger. I lie back and take it. 

The folder in reception claims Shirodhara is “an absolute must-try!” and “everybody should at least once experience this unique treatment”. The Kseerabala oil she used is made with a base of sesame oil and milk, a long list of herbs and various amounts of boiling and straining. It’s supposed to “remove mental stress, deeply relax your nervous system and nourish your hair and sense organs”. My hair was certainly nourished, it was an oil slick for days. I washed it afterwards as per Ketut’s instructions. ‘The bottle marked shampoo first before hot water, or it won’t come out’. I woke up the next morning, looking like Neil from the ‘Young Ones’.

Shirodhara was not the Ayurvedic game-changing sleeping pill this insomniac was after. But I achieved my research purposes. I want one of my fictional characters to pay too much for an over promising, painstaking treatment only to detest it to the point of panic attack. Mission accomplished! But I’d love to speak to someone who’s enjoyed it! Anyone?

However, this was a two-treatment day! I heard my gf giggle in the next room. Next up, we'd chosen Pizhychil – 'Relax and enjoy while warm, medicated oil is continuously poured onto your body and massaged into your skin with well-coordinated rhythmic strokes …’ Oh Pizhychil! I would travel the world and swim many pirate infested seas for you! I have never experienced anything so divinely innocent yet as satisfying sensorially as snoozing on a sunny Sunday afternoon (with a friend), in a massage.

With my brown cotton Tarzan thong tied low and tucked into place, I dropped my sarong … 

And so, began my exquisite anointment, on the soles of my feet! Squee. I’m face down on the sloping wooden table, which looks a bit like the rack in the tower of London without the tie up and stretch you bits. My head is wedged into the tissue lined, child-sized face pillow. The table has shallow grooves chiselled along its long, sloping edges, which allow the poured oil to drain down into a bowl beneath the end of table to be re-heated on the handy electric plate plugged into the wall nearby. At times when the oil felt rawther hot, I hoped they did a quick drip-on-the-wrist temperature check before they poured another bowlful over me. Lying on a wooden slab akin to a mortician’s table sounds uncomfortable but remarkably it was not. 

The rack, I mean slab

Ketut was using a different oil – Sahacharadi. It had a more pleasant scent but again, this Ayurvedic concoction has an impressively long ingredient list of herbs and spices with a base of sesame oil and cow’s milk. (Curious because there is no dairy industry here.) I doubt very much any vegans partaking in this delight know they are being treated with animal unguents.) I tried not to think how many times the oil had, or had not, been recycled. Strained.

After my feet are anointed, the long flap of my Tarzan-thong is drawn out and folded into a neat towel and placed over my, for want of a better word, crack. No doubt to act as a form of butt everything plug. It worked a treat. Next warm oil is swirled over my right buttock, down my thigh and calf and the super relaxing, divine rhythm of the oiliest massage known to womankind commenced proper. I willed it to never stop. Buttock, thigh, calf were followed by lower back. Shoulder. Arms. It’s like sloshing/swimming in the happiest of warm swimming pool/therapeutic oil slick baths imaginable, on the happiest of planets where the daily indulgence of prolonged tactile pleasure is encouraged. Necessary. Vital. Is always on the menu, and like the consumption of coffee and champagne the inhabitants of Planet O never tire of it. In fact, they are the most content mammals with two legs. It’s not til I’m instructed to roll over onto my back that I realised there were two masseuses in the room attending my full-body, Ayurvedic baptism.

I once had a massage in Austria with my Finnish friend Minna, back when I would rather pull my fingernails off than de-robe and have my body touched by a professional. If the masseuse was male that only added to my discomfort. My Austrian masseuse was a small man but still a man. When he instructed me to drop my towel, I felt he took too long checking out my naked back view before I was instructed to lie face down on the bed. In this instance, a rolled towel was placed over my crackola. He kept telling me I was tense and to relax, it was no good my glutes were tensed left and right for the duration of the event. I was convinced he was copping a look down into regions he shouldn’t and wished I could've evaporated.

So how I got to the point of two women massaging my oiled breasts I do not know. But I had. They did not mention they were going in but I wouldn’t have stopped them such were my off the scale relaxation levels. Oil was poured onto my stomach and soft hands worked in a circular motion over my digestive organs. I was thankful we’d not had lunch (they tell you not to eat or drink anything stimulating three hours prior.) Then zip those hands were circling my ladies, in a steady figure of eight. I might have smiled. I feared I might have also been doing some sort of mini Mexican wave a deux in appreciation. Next, oil was poured over my shoulders and collarbones and pooled in my clavicle. Oh my gracious, oil goddesses of goodness that was next level special! 

If anyone travelling to Bali wants to treat themselves to an out-of-this-world tactile experience, I strongly recommend a jaunt to Ubud, and Amrta Siddhi, you'll be smiling for days! We were.